In the drilling and completion industry, the formation of boreholes for the purpose of production or injection of fluid is common. The boreholes are used for exploration or extraction of natural resources such as hydrocarbons, oil, gas, water, and alternatively for CO2 sequestration. During subterranean drilling and completion operations, a pipe or other conduit is lowered into the borehole in an earth formation during or after drilling operations. Such pipes are generally configured as multiple pipe segments to form a string, such as a drill string or production string. As the string is lowered into the borehole, additional pipe segments are coupled to the string by various coupling mechanisms, such as threaded couplings.
Various power and/or communication signals may be transmitted through the pipe segments via a “wired pipe” configuration. Such configurations include electrical, optical, or other conductors extending along the length of selected pipe segments. The conductors are operably connected between pipe segments by a coupling configuration such as a pin box connection. One feature of a wired pipe system is that it can transmit data from a downhole location to the surface rapidly and vice versa.
Generally, in wired pipe configurations, one or more conductors such as wires or cables are run along the inside diameter of a typically steel pipe segment. Various configurations have been proposed to fix, secure, and armor a wire relative to the interior diameter surface of the pipe segment. The conductors require protection from drilling or production fluid and other objects (such as cementing darts) that are pumped downhole or flowing through the pipe segments. Mechanisms to protect the conductors include small diameter protective steel tubings. Although such tubings serve to protect the conductors, they represent a potential obstacle to efficient fluid flow and components such as wireline measurement tools and cementing equipment that are disposed in the pipe segments.
Due to increasing sophistication of downhole systems, the art would be receptive to alternative arrangements of wired pipes and methods of implementing wires in pipe.